Funded with $92 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), this week’s selections focus on accelerating innovation in green technology, grid scale energy storage, power electronics and building efficiency.

ARPA-E was funded for the first time last year with a $400 million budget to award grants for breakthrough clean-energy technologies. ARPA-E projects in 17 states were awarded this April.

At an event at San Francisco this week, the companies launched the “GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid,” a competition designed to cultivate smart-grid technologies. The money is being made available by GE, Emerald Technology Partners, Foundation Capital, Rockport Capital, and Kleiner, Perkinsk, Caufield & Byers, each of which are investing in green-technology start-ups.